AustLit

Barbour Books was founded in 1981 as Book Bargains by Christian publisher Hugh Barbour. The company initially bought and resold other publishers' excess stock to Christian bookstores, but within a few years had begun publishing its own titles. The first of these was the classic allegory The Pilgrim's Progress (1984). The company, which also changed its name to Barbour and Company around this period, soon afterwards released two books that put it on the map as a publisher of Christian titles -Oswald Chambers's My Utmost for His Highest, and Barbour's first original title, The Bible Promise Book.

Through the 1990s, the company experienced phenomenal growth in sales and product line and changed its name once again, to Barbour Publishing, Inc. In 1998, Barbour Publishing entered into a trade distribution agreement with Discovery House Publishers, the publishing arm of the Grand Rapids-based Radio Bible Class Ministries. Following Hugh Barbour's retirement from publishing, after forty-seven years (a career honoured by the 1999 Lifetime Achievement Award of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association), the company has continued to operate under the guidance of President and CEO Tim Martins.

Barbour releases on average a 150 new titles per year, with a catalogue of back titles numbering more than a thousand. In its brief history the company has shipped over one hundred million books.